42 5 august 2019the next day and started talking’.
l ‘My sister was in coma from stage 4 cancer. We made a cov-
enant prayer and i even witnessed Mother Mary near me while
praying. she was completely cured after this.’
Many women we met at Kreupasanam had in common liquor
or tobacco addiction of men in their family. One woman sought
our help to fill the printed registration format for a covenant
prayer. she wanted her husband to love and care for her. “i have
two children. i got married ten years ago. he has stopped talking
to me long back. i am not loved at all,” she said. another couple
had come from thrissur to complete the covenant prayer they
offered after losing their house in last year’s flood. a new house
was built through a government project. the couple says the au-
thorities provided compensation on time and reconstructed the
house. but instead of good governance, the wife thought it was
because of “the blessings of Kreupasanam and Mother Mary and
nothing else.”
and yet when Father Joseph Valiyaveetil fell ill with viral fever,
he got admitted to a private hospital. When asked why Kreupasa-
nam could not cure his disease, he said, “i am a priest and i absorb
the sins of people coming here seeking cure from diseases. they
all become well but there is no one to absorb my sins. hence i
have to go to hospital and take medicines.” KssP recently
filed a complaint against Kreupasanam for promoting
superstitions but it led to no action.
Ks Zubair, a medical doctor who got his Mbbs degree
from Kozhikode Government Medical College and who
claims to have been an office-bearer for the left-wing students’
Federation of india, now runs a centre to cure people possessed
by djinns, which he claims is the cause of many diseases. he is
opposed to the anti-black magic bill. if asked to stop his practice,
he plans to invoke his fundamental right to religion. “there are
legal means to fight against the proposed bill,” he says.
that someone should be correlating djinns with diseases is
not accepted by many devout Muslims also. “it has nothing to do
with islam,” says Jameela alpatta, the vice-president of Muslim
Girls and Women’s Movement (MGM), affiliated to the Mujahid
faction in Kerala. she agrees that there is a reference about djinns
in the Quran but doesn’t believe they have the capacity to possess
human beings. she supports the bill. “treatment practices like
Dr Zubair’s should be banned. it is nothing but exploitation of
superstitions,” she says.
the bill does contain provisions to curb it. Clause 10 says: ‘Pro-
hibiting and preventing a person from taking medical treatment
for any illness and instead giving him treatment like mantra-tan-
tra or chanting prayers or such other things would be treated as a
punishable offence.’ but the bill also has provisions to defeat itself.
in its present form, any exorcist activity can be exempted under
the cover of religion because the bill does not provide any defini-tions to exception terms like ‘religion’ and ‘spiritual’. “there are
limitations, i agree,” says K sasidharan Nair, the vice-chairman
of the state Law reforms Commission. “We don’t claim that this
bill would put an end to all such practices. We cannot go against
the fundamental rights of religious freedom guaranteed in the
Constitution.”
Dr Manoj Komath, a rationalist activist and senior scientist
at sree Chitra tirunal institute for Medical sciences & technol-
ogy, thinks the bill will not be of much use. he points to what
he terms the conspicuous example of ‘Chathan seva’, especially
in the village of Peringottukara, in which kuttichathans or pol-
tergeists are worshipped in temples. For a fee or an expensive
pooja, it solves the problems of devotees. “Normally, almost all
the established black magic and sorcery activities are claimed
(or cleverly made) to be connected to some religious practice by
the proponents themselves. this Chathan seva is being claimed
to be a legitimate hindu religious activity. however, none of the
hindu scriptures endorse it,” says Komath. he argues that section
15 of the bill permits all these activities.
Predominantly worshipped by backward-caste hindus,
chicken and liquor are the major offerings in the chathan temples.
“Devotees used to offer arrack in the past. When it was banned,
we allowed indian Made Foreign Liquor. either the devotees
paid for it and we bought from the beverages Corporation
outlets or they themselves bring it,” says sujith Lal, a trustee
and priest of Kanadi Chathan Madom, one such temple. he
argues that no code of law can close down the temple because
of their fundamental right to practice religion.
the bill clearly says that vastu and astrology would not come
under its purview and that ‘the advice in regard to vasthusastra,
or advice by astrologers, unless such advice results in cheating,
defrauding or exploiting any person’ is exempted. the ‘saint’ who
made Jamshath’s life hell, the doctor who does djinn therapy, the
newspaper that performs miracles, the Chathan seva in temples
can all claim for the exemption provisions in the bill.
the state Crime records bureau doesn’t have separate data of
crimes related to exorcism but the rationalists give some indica-
tion. “twenty-four people have been killed in 17 crimes since the
last three years,” says u Kalanathan who meticulously collected
media reports of crimes related to black magic since 2014. every
time there is a gruesome crime, there is the call for curbing black
magic by law. in May this year, exorcism by a family in financial
straits drove a mother and daughter to suicide in Neyyattinkara
in Kerala. in august 2018, an exorcist and three members of his
family were buried alive. the murders were done by his assistant
who had been a loyal follower for years. however, no one practis-
ing black magic seems to be worried about the bill, confident that
whatever they are doing would pass the test of being a religious
faith, a confidence corroborated by the loopholes in the bill. nSocietyin the bill’s present form, any exorcist activity
can be exempted under the cover of religion